The Ins and Outs of the Jains in Tamil Literary Histories

The Jains and their texts play a key role in the literary histories of the Tamil-speaking region. However, in their modern form, dating from 1856 to the present, these histories have been written almost exclusively by non-Jains. Driving their efforts have been agendas such as cultural evolutionism, Dravidian nationalism or Śaiva devotionalism. This essay builds on ideas articulated by the contemporary Tamil theorist K. Civatampi, examining how various models of periodization have frozen the Jains in the ancient past. Further, it will explore how this unfolding historical drama, which gloriously climaxes in Tamil literature, has attributed the Jains, as dramatis personae, merely a role in early Jain texts; their role as communities transmitting these texts has been ignored. In contrast to this typical pattern, this article will also introduce a literary history written in 1941 by the Jain A. Cakravarti Nāyaṉār (1880–1960). It will explore whether or not his voice, which emerged from within the same academic community contributing to the strange absence of Jains in the contemporary awareness of Tamil literary, was successful in finding another way for Jains of being heard, and for non-Jains, of listening.     

Verses Attributed to Bṛhaspati in the Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha: A Critical Appraisal

Sāya?a-Mādhava closed his exposition of the Cārvāka philosophy in his Sarva-dar?ana-sa?graha, Chap. 1 by quoting 11 and a half verses, the authorship of all of which was attributed to B?haspati, the eponymous founder of materialism in India. One of these verses is presumably taken from the Vi??upurā?a. However, it is not B?haspati but some demons, deluded by a Jain and a Buddhist monk, who say this. B?haspati does not appear at all in this Purā?a. Variant versions of the same story are found in other Purā?as but B?haspti is not invariably present in all of them. The origin of the story may be traced back to the Maitrāya?īya Upani?ad. Although B?haspati plays a leading part in that story, the background is quite different. By comparing all the versions found in the Purā?as and the subject matter of the epigrams attributed to B?haspati the paper proposes to show that the Vi??upurā?a story has nothing to do with the materialists, whether the Pre-Cārvākas or the Cārvākas; the Jains and the Buddhists are the target of attack. Sāya?a-mādhava, by placing these satirical epigrams either in their original or in altered forms, and attributing them to B?haspati, has mixed up the views of all sorts of nāstikas, particularly the Jains and the Buddhists, with the Cārvākas and thereby succeeded in deceiving several generations of readers and misleading even the best of scholars.     

Beginnings of Jaina Ontology and Its Models

The paper analyses the beginnings of systematic ontology in Jainism, which appears to have began after first century CE, albeit certain ontology-relevant terminology in a nascent form was present earlier. A clear expression of systematic ontological reflection is the existence of models that organize ideas and categories in a more consistent conceptual scheme. Jainism follows similar developments that had earlier taken shape in in the early Buddhist Abhidharma, proto-Sā?khya-Yoga and proto-Nyāya-Vai?e?ika. In addition, the paper argues that the models, five in total, can be used as a methodological tool to distinguish various historical layers in early Jaina writings.

     

隋《开皇律》十恶渊源新探

《开皇律》首创的“十恶之条”的罪名,不仅有从《北齐律》重罪十条发展而来的实质(即具体内容)的来源,而且还有素来为人们所忽视的形式(即其名称借用自佛教所谓的“十恶”)的来源。认识这一点有助于我们更全面地把握十恶的实质。     

Proof of a Sentient Knower: Utpaladeva’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Ajaḍapramātṛsiddhi</Emphasis> with the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Vṛtti</Emphasis> of Harabhatta Shastri

Utpaladeva (c. 900–950 C.E.) was the chief originator of the Pratyabhijñā philosophical theology of monistic Kashmiri ?aivism, which was further developed by Abhinavagupta (c. 950–1020 C.E.) and other successors. The Aja?apramāt?siddhi, “Proof of a Sentient Knower,” is one component of Utpaladeva’s trio of specialized studies called the Siddhitrayī, “Three Proofs.” This article provides an introduction to and translation of the Aja?apramāt?siddhi along with the V?tti commentary on it by the nineteenth–twentieth century pa??it, Harabhatta Shastri. Utpaladeva in this work presents “transcendental” arguments that a universal knower (pramāt?), the God ?iva, necessarily exists and that this knower is sentient (aja?a). He defends the Pratyabhijñā understanding of sentience against alternative views of both Hindu and Buddhist schools. As elsewhere in his corpus, Utpaladeva also endeavors through his arguments to lead students to the recognition (pratyabhijñā) of identity with ?iva, properly understood as the sentient knower.     

The fact of reason: Kant's prajna-perception of freedom

Conclusion I have been experimental in my comparative approach, using the instrument of Hua-yen Buddhism to investigate Kant's fact or reason. What has been demonstrated? Certainly, the hypothesis that comparative study is flexible enough to illuminate strands of our own philosophical tradition is both interesting and compelling. But for Kant, does the study of practicability with reference to the buddhi-mind end in the perception of the dharmadhatu? I have marshalled some evidence to support this theory, implicit throughout the Second Critique. At the end of the Grundlagen, Kant offers one further note suggesting this conception must have been a continuing influence on his later moral thinking. Referring to the idea of a purely intelligible world, he says it serves to produce in us a lively interest in the moral law by means of the splendid ideal of a universal kingdom of ends in themselves (rational beings), to which we can belong as members only if we are scrupulous to live in accordance with maxims of freedom as if they were laws of nature.⁴¹     

Retrieving the Hidden Meaning: Jain Commentarial Techniques and the Art of Memory

One of the peculiar characteristics of the vast body of Jain commentarial literature is the primacy given to artha, meaning, over sūtra, the root text itself. It is the task of the commentator—or, in a pedagogical context, the teacher—to retrieve and explain a text’s true, hidden meaning, which often appears to stretch and even contradict its apparent meaning. This article examines the interpretive processes in one of the most important Jain commentaries on monastic discipline, the Bṛhatkalpabhāṣya attributed to the sixth-century CE Śvetāmbara Jain exegete Saṅghadāsa. An examination of passages where the commentator claims to uncover the real—but sometimes less-than-apparent—meaning of monastic rules enables us to detect the interpretive moves involved and the underlying assumptions about the nature of text and the work of commentary. I argue that this commentarial tradition presupposes particular practices of memory, and a degree of internalizing the traditional hermeneutical methods, on the part of a monastic practitioner who wants to understand the text correctly and live according to its true meaning.     

An Early Tibetan Commentary on Atiśa’s Satyadvayāvatāra

Dīpa?kara?rījñāna (982–1054 c.e.), more commonly known under his honorific title of Ati?a, is a renowned figure in Tibetan Buddhist cultural memory. He is famous for coming to Tibet and revitalizing Buddhism there during the early eleventh century. Of the many works that Ati?a composed, translated, and brought to Tibet one of the most well-known was his “Entry to the Two Realities” (Satyadvayāvatāra). Recent scholarship has provided translations and Tibetan editions of this work, including Lindtner’s English translation (1981) and Ejima’s Japanese translation (1983). However, previously there was no known Indian or Tibetan commentary to this work. This article identifies for the first time a brief commentary to the Satyadvayāvatāra and discusses its content and purport in relation to early Madhyamaka philosophy in Tibet, and provides an annotated translation of the work. This early Tibetan commentary on the two realities (satyadvaya) provides important insight into how late eleventh century or early twelfth centuries Tibetan followers of Ati?a understood the tenets of Buddhist philosophy, the nature of valid cognition (tshad ma), and the importance of spiritual authority. The early Tibetan commentary to Ati?a’s Satyadvayāvatāra provides direct textual evidence of the beginnings of scholasticism in Tibet and offers an early perspective on the formative developments in the intellectual history of Tibetan Madhyamaka.     

Reformulating the Buddhist Free Will Problem: Why There can be no Definitive Solution

In recent years, scholars have become increasingly interested in reconstructing a Buddhist stance on the free will problem. Since then, Buddhism has been variously described as implicitly hard determinist, paleo-compatibilist, neo-compatibilist and libertarian. Some scholars, however, question the legitimacy of Buddhist free will theorizing, arguing that Buddhism does not share sufficiently many presuppositions required to articulate the problem. This paper argues that, though Buddhist and Western versions of the free will problem are not perfectly isomorphic, a problem analogous to that expressed in Western philosophy emerges within the Buddhist framework. This analogous problem concerns the difficulty of explaining karmic responsibility in a world governed by dependent origination. This paper seeks to reconstruct an approach to free will consistent with Madhyamaka philosophy and, in so doing, to demonstrate that the mutual exclusivity of positions such as hard determinism and libertarianism is, from the Madhyamaka perspective, merely superficial. By building on the perspectivalist theory advanced by Daniel Breyer, it is clear that a Madhyamaka stance on free will demands the wholesale abandonment of perspectives, such that the idea of any one solution as definitive is disavowed. Taken to its logical conclusion, therefore, perspectivalism entails the relative truth of perspectivalism itself.     

Feminism and the siren call of law

Feminists have so often declared and celebrated the fecundity of the relationship between feminism and legal reform that critique of legal doctrine and norms, together with proposals for their reconstruction, have become the hallmarks of the modern feminist engagement with law. Yet today the long-cherished ‘truth’ about law’s potentially beneficial impact on women’s lives has started to fade and the quest for legal change has become fraught with problems. In responding to the aporetic state in which feminist legal scholarship now finds itself, this paper offers a recounting of the relationship between feminism and the politics of legal reform. However, in so doing, it seeks neither to support nor to oppose these politics. Instead, it explores the historical contingencies that made this discourse possible. Utilizing Foucault’s concept of episteme, it demarcates the nineteenth century as the historical moment in which this discourse arose, and tracing the epistemic shifts underpinning the production of knowledge, locates its positivities at the interface of the time’s episteme and the discourse of transcendental subjectivity that it engendered.

Justice denied and justice delayed: the trials and tribulations of a Victorian solicitor

This paper explores a Victorian cause célèbre, particularly the latter stages, in which a London solicitor, W.H. Barber, battled first to obtain the renewal of his practising certificate and then to claim compensation from public funds for the sufferings he had endured as a result of his wrongful conviction. Barber's misfortunes arose from his unwitting participation in a series of sensational frauds on the Bank of England, leading to his transportation to the penal colony on Norfolk Island in 1844. Pardoned on the basis of confessions from the wrongdoers, his readmission to the profession was unrelentingly opposed by the Incorporated Law Society, and he only prevailed after a series of rebuffs in the courts.

Barber's tribulations, which had first highlighted the defects of the criminal trial, provide an unusual insight into the under-explored and uncertain state of solicitors' professional ethics at this time and the controversial role of the ILS in enforcing them. They also yield valuable information on solicitors' practices and the effects of a royal pardon.     

Social sciences and the evolving concept of corruption

The term corruptio appears in many languages, but behind it lie several contrasting strands of thought and language. Current political usages of corruptio--emphasizing bribery, which in turn is just one of several families of ideas to which the term has variously been attached--date from the late 18th or early 19th century, have been strongly influenced by Anglo-Saxon legal thought, and may be traced to Roman roots. But French lexicographers developed a richer and more diverse vocabulary to encompass the crimes of civil servants and judges in addition to those of the people who sought to influence them. Religion, and in particular offices within the Church, also strongly influenced the ideas and vocabulary of corruption. Ultimately, corruptio can be said to have Biblical origins and a core meaning centered around injustice. The complexity and richness of the idea of corruption, as viewed from that perspective, in often lost in the narrower and more technical usages that dominate contemporary debate and analysis.     

What did Apalachin prove? Mafia skepticism in cold war politics and culture

With varying degrees of enthusiasm, federal, state, and local governments had been investigating and prosecuting gangsters since the late nineteenth century. Despite this relatively long history, the primary interpretation of the Apalachin arrests lay in the belief that the New York State Police had uncovered proof of the existence of organized crime. This essay investigates the reasons why there seemed to be an ongoing need to prove its existence, concluding that organized crime came to be defined within the cultural and political agendas of Cold War America. Drawing on media accounts, government documents, archival sources, and popular non-fiction, this essay argues that rather than the conclusive proof of the mafia, Apalachin is best viewed as an exhibit in an ongoing argument about the existence and meaning of organized crime.

Foreword: Applied ethics in criminal justice

Abstract

In The Problem of Punishment, David Boonin offers an analysis of punishment and an account of what he sees as ethically problematic about it. In this essay I make three points. First, pace Boonin's analysis, everyday examples of punishment show that it sometimes isn't harmful, but merely “discomforting.” Second, intentionally “discomforting” offenders isn't uniquely problematic, given that we have cases of non-punitive intentional discomforture—and perhaps even harmful discomforture—that seem unobjectionable. Third, a notable fact about both non-harmful punishment and non-punitive intentional discomforture is that they aim at improving the subject. This suggests that, if the prima facie wrongness of intentionally harming another person is the fundamental challenge for punishment, the “educative defense” is the royal road to justifying the practice. I conclude by outlining one version of the educative defense that exploits this advantage while avoiding some traditional objections to the approach.     

How American Commercial Bail Developed Differently from Other Common Law Countries

Outside the United States those countries sharing the common law tradition are pervasively hostile to commercialization of the bail process, whereas in the United States it is the typical approach. In some jurisdictions payment for bail is a crime; in others it is simply obstructed by various civil legal disabilities. How the American branch of the common law heritage came to deviate so strikingly from the rest on the matter of commercial bail is the topic of this article.

Beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, courts principally in Ireland, England, and India began to act against payment to bail sureties on the concept that any indemnification of them—even partial—undermined their reliability. Irish courts took the approach that indemnified potential sureties were unreliable and should be rejected by courts. Where all potential sureties were indemnified, bail should be denied. In England courts declared agreements to indemnify sureties illegal contracts contrary to public policy, which would not be enforced by courts. While India took up the refinement of this position, England went on to declare agreements to pay bail sureties to be criminal conspiracies.

Meanwhile in the United States a circumscribed version of the position that indemnification contracts were against public policy—and therefore illegal and unenforcible—actually gained acceptance between 1870 and 1912. In 1912, however, Justice Holmes in Leary v. U.S. renounced the common law concept of bail sureties in favor of an “impersonal and wholly pecuniary” view. This terminated the anti-indemnification movement. Courts soon noted the detrimental effects of commercialism on bail.     

Otherwise than Hospitality: A Disputation on the Relation of Ethics to Law and Politics

At a time of unprecedented migration and social displacement, following a century ravaged by war and hegemonic shift, the question of hospitality presents itself with unparalleled urgency. Taking his cue from Immanuel Kant’s cosmopolitics, Jacques Derrida addressed this question by deliberating on the nature of the political obligation to the other person. Invoking the work of Emmanuel Levinas, this demand is first of all ethical, and unconditional. But Derrida was also acutely aware of the residual violence of the hospitable gesture, which always takes place in a scene of power. The resultant aporias at the heart of hospitality provoked debate between the two authors at the 2007 Critical Legal Conference, and this paper seeks to elucidate and elaborate on this encounter. At stake are the matters of the potential political forms of hospitality, whether it should always been striven for and, ultimately, how one can conceptually reconcile its ethics with its violence.

On Desire,Transcendence and Sacrifice

This contribution offers a careful but critical reading of Johan van der Walt’s theory of post-apartheid law as sacrifice and social struggle. By placing a theoretical emphasis on the inevitability of violence and the impossibility of love, Van der Walt’s thesis risks denying the possibility of thinking the world in a different, way. In order to reconceive the terms of community and horizontality in post-apartheid South Africa, there is a need to move beyond thinking the world as constructed according to tension, conflict and self-preservation at the expense of understanding and compassion. In developing a critique of law as sacrifice, I utilise Panu Minkkinen’s call for justice as the beyond of law that goes beyond the mere battle for recognition. I also address his view that the unappeasable desire of metaphysics entails the recognition that there is hope for the future and the recovering of transcendence as otherness. Secondly, I use Louis Wolcher’s work on Zen Buddhism to argue that any obsession with conceptual purity, as is glimpsed in Van der Walt’s work, ignores the impossibility of setting down the immutable and universal truth for all time. In other words, however attractive a theory of law as sacrifice may be, it is only one perspective amongst many others. Lastly, I contrast Van der Walt’s work with that of Luce Irigaray, and in particular her formulation of ‘horizontal transcendence’ that makes possible relations ‘between two’.